Russian War Relief

Last updated

Russian War Relief (RWR) (also known as the Russian War Relief Fund and The American Committee for Russian War Relief) was the largest American agency for foreign war relief. It had the "express and exclusive purpose of giving succor to the Russian people at a time of crisis." [1]

Contents

Organizational history

On July 29, 1941, one month after Germany's attack on Russia, a group met in New York. This effort led to the formal establishment of Russian War Relief, Inc. (RWR) in New York on September 12, 1941. The group had headquarters located at 535 Fifth Avenue in New York City. [2]

The organization launched its fundraising drive with a mass meeting held at Madison Square Garden on October 27, 1941. [2]

In addition to fundraising to provide medical supplies and humanitarian aid to the people of Soviet Russia, RWR conducted a public education mission to build support for the war effort. Late in 1941 the film Our Russian Front was produced, featuring war footage from the Eastern front. [3] The movie, produced by director Lewis Milestone and documentary filmmaker Joris Ivens, featured narration by Walter Huston and was displayed in theaters to a paying audience. [3] The film premiered on February 11, 1942. [4]

Aid distributed

A wide array of medical and humanitarian aid was provided to the Russian war effort by Russian War Relief. Some products distributed during the first year of the war included typhus and malaria medication, hospital field tents, x-ray film, surgical implements, sterilization equipment, and artificial sweetener. [5]

Officials

Fred Myers, who later founded the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS), served as director of public relations and was later promoted to Executive Director. The chairman of Russian War Relief was Edward C. Carter, chairman of the National Committee for Medical Aid to the Soviet Union, a member of the Executive Committee of the American Russian Institute, and secretary general of the Institute of Pacific Relations.

From 1942, the fund was headed by Allen Wardwell.

See also

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Lend-Lease</span> WWII program to provide U.S. allies with free armaments

Lend-Lease, formally the Lend-Lease Act and introduced as An Act to Promote the Defense of the United States, was a policy under which the United States supplied the United Kingdom, the Soviet Union, France, Republic of China, and other Allied nations of the Second World War with food, oil, and materiel between 1941 and 1945. The aid was given free of charge on the basis that such help was essential for the defense of the United States.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Lewis Milestone</span> American film director (1895–1980)

Lewis Milestone was an American film director. Milestone directed Two Arabian Knights (1927) and All Quiet on the Western Front (1930), both of which received the Academy Award for Best Director. He also directed The Front Page (1931), The General Died at Dawn (1936), Of Mice and Men (1939), Ocean's 11 (1960), and received the directing credit for Mutiny on the Bounty (1962), though Marlon Brando largely appropriated his responsibilities during its production.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">International Rescue Committee</span> Nongovernmental humanitarian organization

The International Rescue Committee (IRC) is a global humanitarian aid, relief, and development nongovernmental organization. Founded in 1933 as the International Relief Association, at the request of Albert Einstein, and changing its name in 1942 after amalgamating with the similar Emergency Rescue Committee, the IRC provides emergency aid and long-term assistance to refugees and those displaced by war, persecution, or natural disaster. The IRC is currently working in about 40 countries and 26 U.S. cities where it resettles refugees and helps them become self-sufficient. It focuses mainly on health, education, economic wellbeing, power, and safety.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Humanitarian aid</span> Material or logistical assistance for people in need

Humanitarian aid is material and logistic assistance to people who need help. It is usually short-term help until the long-term help by the government and other institutions replaces it. Among the people in need are the homeless, refugees, and victims of natural disasters, wars, and famines. Humanitarian relief efforts are provided for humanitarian purposes and include natural disasters and human-made disasters. The primary objective of humanitarian aid is to save lives, alleviate suffering, and maintain human dignity. It may, therefore, be distinguished from development aid, which seeks to address the underlying socioeconomic factors which may have led to a crisis or emergency. There is a debate on linking humanitarian aid and development efforts, which was reinforced by the World Humanitarian Summit in 2016. However, the conflation is viewed critically by practitioners.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Harry Hopkins</span> American New Deal administrator and WWII diplomat (1890–1946)

Harold "Harry" Lloyd Hopkins was an American statesman, public administrator, and presidential advisor. A trusted deputy to President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Hopkins directed New Deal relief programs before serving as the eighth United States secretary of commerce from 1938 to 1940 and as Roosevelt's chief foreign policy advisor and liaison to Allied leaders during World War II. During his career, Hopkins supervised the New York Temporary Emergency Relief Administration, the Federal Emergency Relief Administration, the Civil Works Administration, and the Works Progress Administration, which he built into the largest employer in the United States. He later oversaw the $50 billion Lend-Lease program of military aid to the Allies and, as Roosevelt's personal envoy, played a pivotal role in shaping the alliance between the United States and the United Kingdom.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee</span> Relief organization in New York City

American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, also known as Joint or JDC, is a Jewish relief organization based in New York City. Since 1914 the organisation has supported Jewish people living in Israel and throughout the world. The organization is active in more than 70 countries.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">American Theatre Wing</span> New York City-based organization

The American Theatre Wing is a New York City–based non-profit organization "dedicated to supporting excellence and education in theatre", according to its mission statement. Originally known as the Stage Women's War Relief during World War I, it later became a part of the World War II Allied Relief Fund under its current name. The ATW created and sponsors the Tony Awards in theatrical arts.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Russian famine of 1921–1922</span> Famine in the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic

The Russian famine of 1921–1922, also known as the Povolzhye famine, was a severe famine in the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic that began early in the spring of 1921 and lasted until 1922. The famine resulted from the combined effects of economic disturbance from the Russian Revolution, the Russian Civil War, and the government policy of war communism. It was exacerbated by rail systems that could not distribute food efficiently.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">American Relief Administration</span> US military effort to prevent starvation in Europe

American Relief Administration (ARA) was an American relief mission to Europe and later post-revolutionary Russia after World War I. Herbert Hoover, future president of the United States, was the program director.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">State Defense Committee</span> Powerful body in the Soviet government during World War II

The State Defense Committee was an extraordinary organ of state power in the Soviet Union during the German-Soviet War, also called the Great Patriotic War, with complete state power in the country.

RWR can refer to:

The Workers International Relief (WIR) — also known as Internationale Arbeiter-Hilfe (IAH) in German and as Международная рабочая помощь in Russian — was an adjunct of the Communist International initially formed to channel relief from international working class organizations and communist parties to famine-stricken Soviet Russia. The organization, based in Berlin, later produced films and coordinated propaganda efforts on behalf of the USSR.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Soviet Union–United States relations</span> Bilateral relations

Relations between the Soviet Union and the United States were fully established in 1933 as the succeeding bilateral ties to those between the Russian Empire and the United States, which lasted from 1776 until 1917; they were also the predecessor to the current bilateral ties between the Russian Federation and the United States that began in 1992 after the end of the Cold War. The relationship between the Soviet Union and the United States was largely defined by mistrust and tense hostility. The invasion of the Soviet Union by Germany as well as the attack on the U.S. Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbor by Imperial Japan marked the Soviet and American entries into World War II on the side of the Allies in June and December 1941, respectively. As the Soviet–American alliance against the Axis came to an end following the Allied victory in 1945, the first signs of post-war mistrust and hostility began to immediately appear between the two countries, as the Soviet Union militarily occupied Eastern European countries and turned them into satellite states, forming the Eastern Bloc. These bilateral tensions escalated into the Cold War, a decades-long period of tense hostile relations with short phases of détente that ended after the collapse of the Soviet Union and emergence of the present-day Russian Federation at the end of 1991.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ukrainian Congress Committee of America</span>

The Ukrainian Congress Committee of America or UCCA is a non-partisan non-profit national umbrella organization uniting over 20 national Ukrainian American organizations in advocating for over 1,000,000 Americans of Ukrainian descent. Its membership is composed of fraternal, educational, veterans, religious, cultural, social, business, political and humanitarian organizations, as well as individuals. Established in 1940, the UCCA maintains local volunteer chapters across the United States, with a national office based in New York City, as well as a Washington, D.C., news bureau, the Ukrainian National Information Service. The humanitarian aid committee, the United Ukrainian American Relief Committee, is headquartered in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

The American Russian Institute for Cultural Relations with the Soviet Union, previously known as the American Society for Cultural Relations with the Soviet Union, was identified by Attorney General of the United States Thomas C. Clark as a communist front group in 1947 and was so listed on the Attorney General's List of Subversive Organizations for 1948, in accordance with President Harry Truman's Executive Order 9835.

Edward Clark Carter worked with the International Y.M.C.A. in India and in France, during World War I, from 1902 to 1918, but was best known for his work with the Institute of Pacific Relations (IPR), of which he was secretary from 1926 to 1933, secretary general from 1933 to 1946 and executive vice-chairman from 1946 to 1948.

Bettis Alston Garside 葛思德, better known as B.A. Garside, was an educator, author, and executive administrator for several U.S. charities related to China.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">British War Relief Society</span>

The British War Relief Society (BWRS) was a US-based humanitarian umbrella organisation dealing with the supply of non-military aid such as food, clothes, medical supplies and financial aid to people in Great Britain during the early years of the Second World War. The organisation acted as the administrative hub and central receiving depot for items donated from other charities which were then parceled out to its affiliate organizations in the US and to Britain. These donations were raised in the name of the BWRS, rather than in the name of the smaller groups.

<i>Our Russian Front</i> 1942 film

Our Russian Front is a 1942 American documentary film directed by Joris Ivens and Lewis Milestone, and narrated by Walter Huston to promote support for the Soviet Union's war effort.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Evans Clark</span>

Evans Clark (1888–1970) was an American writer strongly committed to first to Communist and Socialist causes and then liberal socio-economic issues, served for a quarter century as first executive director of the Twentieth Century Fund, and was husband of Freda Kirchwey.

References

  1. Carter, E. C. (1944). "Russian War Relief". Slavonic and East European Review. American Series. 3 (2): 61–74. doi:10.2307/3020236. JSTOR   3020236.
  2. 1 2 "Chairman," New York Daily News, Sept. 29, 1941, p. 75.
  3. 1 2 "Our Russian Front to be Shown at Trans-Luxe Theatre", Boston Globe, March 7, 1942, p. 14.
  4. "Milestone's Soviet War Film Due This Week," Brooklyn Daily Eagle, Feb. 8, 1942, section E, p. 8.
  5. "Relief Society Sends Saccharine to Russians," Daily Palo Alto Times, Jan. 8, 1942, p. 7.